Welcome back. Two things worth a second look from last week: GSK spent $10.6bn on cancer, its biggest deal in over a decade, and the Pentagon put WuXi AppTec on a list that could reshape who makes your drug.
Neither is really about the other. One is a company buying ahead of a patent cliff it can see coming. The other is the government making part of the supply chain harder to use, on a timeline nobody has quite priced in.
Before we get into it, a pop quiz to warm you up and beat the Monday blues:
Milestone Monday · Jun 15
GSK Pays Up, Again
GSK is paying $10.6bn in all cash for Nuvalent, a 40% premium and its biggest acquisition in more than a decade. The deal brings two late-stage lung cancer assets, the ROS1 inhibitor zidesamtinib and the brain-penetrant ALK inhibitor neladalkib, both with FDA decision dates this autumn.
WHAT HAPPENED
This is GSK's third deal of the year under Luke Miels, who became CEO in January, after the $2.2bn RAPT and $950m 35Pharma buys. Miels said the deal was codenamed "Nashville" and that his oncology team had flagged Nuvalent as a target more than a year ago.
He became convinced at ASCO, watching Pfizer present seven-year survival data from its CROWN trial for Lorbrena: the efficacy was strong, but the toxicity was hard to miss, enough that one slide asked, "What price the CROWN?"
The mood changes and weight gain are the price, and they matter for patients who are mostly of working age. Nuvalent's bet is that its chemistry delivers the same durability without them. Zidesamtinib faces an FDA decision on September 18, neladalkib on November 27.